You are not alone

Dear friends whose children express frustration, overwhelm, and need for help by being destructive, violent, offensive, or mortifying:

It’s easy to feel like you are the only parent in the world whose child has these struggles. Every other family seems to glide through the world without so many stumbling blocks and sticking points, without so much yelling. It’s easy to feel nobody understands. Sometimes, this is because literally nobody else you know understands. Sometimes it’s because you’re so mortified about things your child does when they are overwhelmed that it feels like you can’t possibly talk to anyone about it. Sometimes you talk to someone, and they try to relate, but the thing their kid did that they think is so awful is basically a dinner table tradition in your house. Or they give advice that is so simplistic or condescending that you want to scream. Or they never are able to understand, and the friendship fades or implodes.

It’s isolating and lonely. And also, I have to tell you: You are not alone.

Your child is not the only one ever to do the things your child is doing or having the struggles your child is having. They are not the “worst” or “most difficult” child in the whole school, city, or world. They are not the only child to break things or bite people or shout utterly awful things, or the only child to run away, or whatever other frustrating, violent, bizarre, or shameful things they are doing to beg for help.

Their needs are not extreme or unfathomable. They are not trying to be unfair to the other children and their needs are not unreasonable to ask school to support. Their needs are probably not even “special” – we all need to feel safe, connected, competent, and self-directed, and we all need “extra” assistance in our own ways.

Sometimes, adults seem to try to convince parents of the direness of the situation by acting as though a child is uniquely horrible or outrageous (“I’ve never had a student act this way!”). They want parents to “take this seriously,” as though parents don’t take it seriously when their child is flailing and in misery. Sometimes, people who think of themselves as experienced teachers or schools with a “really great program” seem to need to act like a child they don’t understand or can’t help is the problem (“Everyone else does really well here”). Sometimes they even seem resentful of a child for disrupting their “great” program or making them feel not in control. Sometimes other parents need to blame you or talk as though your child is a complete outlier, because it makes them feel less worried about things their own child does (“At least she isn’t like THAT”).

All of it can leave you feeling like you’re all alone. Your child is the only one. I worked in schools for 30+ years before starting The Huddle for Families. I promise: your child is not the only one. Nothing your child has done, said, thrown, yelled, or destroyed would cause me to be shocked or to judge them or you. All over the world, children are struggling and doing whatever they can to get adults to understand they need help. What I do find shocking are the terrible words, labels, and condemnation the world hurls at children who are, at the heart of it, trying their hardest, failing, being failed, and suffering miserably for it.

The truth is you don’t know who else is struggling. That child sitting in class quietly getting all the praise? They might be struggling, but for whatever reason, they express it by shutting down, masking, or being perfect instead of hurling water bottles. That super polite child of your friend’s who always remembers please and thank you and makes you wonder where you went wrong? They might go home and shriek at their brother. Everyone has a hard time in some way: some of us just are extra – or extra loud – about it.

You are not even the only parents at your school getting these calls and having these meetings. I promise those other parents exist. Find them. They are probably aching for someone who isn’t judging them or their child to reach out. Those are your new people.

[Story: A friend of The Huddle for Families told me this week that they’d attended a large gathering where everyone else was talking about how great their kids were doing, happy families played together, children smiled in stock photo kinds of moments. Not their kid, of course, because she is really struggling right now. This parent spent the whole event feeling alone, like everybody else there was part of a club they could never join. And then: a few days after they got home, they heard about someone else who’d been there. THAT person had spent the whole time feeling exactly the same way, like she was the only one whose kid wasn’t thriving. And they’d missed one another entirely. You are not the only one, even when you are sure you’re the only one.]

Find your people. Or come to a Huddle or talk it out 1:1. That’s a big part of why we started The Huddle for Families: so parents and caregivers can find one another, get some ideas, and feel a little less so desperately, depressingly alone. 

You are not alone, I promise. And your child needs you, because as alone and ashamed and helpless as you are feeling, they probably feel the same way. Luckily, they have you to tell them, “I got you,” and “We can work on this together,” and, maybe most importantly, “You are not alone.”

Find an article.

It’s not about the behaviour

It’s October, so for many kids and classrooms, the honeymoon is over. Anyone who spends most of their school day trying to hold it together just can’t any more. Or they can, but then they come home and fall apart. Children may have been struggling all along, or maybe teachers are getting serious and unwittingly ending supports kids were counting on. Either way, it’s harder now, and kids are letting us know. 

How? Some kids cry or whine, some get stomachaches or mystery ailments, some take it out on other kids with mean words or bullying. Some become perfectionists, easily frustrated, or paralyzed by even the smallest changes. Some become the “class clown” or interrupt learning. And some kids scream, hit, run, or do other dangerous things.

It’s all the same. Everything I just described is communication. It’s all signs that a child is overwhelmed by the environment, overtaxed by the expectations, or under-supported and needs help. Some kids are able to express this in ways that are articulate (“I need help!”) or at least sympathetic (tears that melt adult hearts and make us say “Oh, honey, let me help you.”). Other kids are not. Those kids do things that get them scolded, sent to the office, or pointed at by peers. It’s all communicating a need for help, but some kids get it, and others get left out or labeled troublemakers.

How do we know this is true? Because we know this: children want to be “good” and successful and cherished. They are already trying as hard as they can to make adults happy. There is not a single child in the world who wakes up and says, “Today, I’m gonna ruin math class, be stared at in horror by my classmates, disappoint my teacher, and spend recess on the bench. I can’t wait!” They are trying. They are trying their hardest and failing, disappointing adults they love and ending up on the bench anyway, and they feel awful about it. Often they don’t even know what they did that made everyone so mad, because they were just trying to do what we want or to tell us they can’t. We know this because we were those kids, and because we have seen what happens when they get the support they need: they thrive.

The important thing is this: we must focus on that need, on what the behaviour can tell us, not on the behaviour itself. If we are only working to teach kids to control their behaviour (“stop interrupting!), or if we are trying to incentivize them to do what we want (“you’ll earn a sticker!”), we’re not addressing the actual problem, and we will always fail. As my own sassy-but-perceptive child once told a behaviour therapist, “You don’t care how I feel. You only care that I act good.”

All this month, The Huddle for Families is focusing on what might be behind the behaviour, so that kids can do more than act good. We’re working to help teachers and families figure out what children might need, because that is the absolute best way to make classrooms, households, and communities more inclusive, safer places for everyone, so everyone’s children can thrive.

Where to start?

• Read this blog and subscribe to our newsletter.

• Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. 

• Join us for a Huddle

• Sign up for Office Hours with me and talk 1:1 about whatever you want. 

• Contact us about professional development for your school or organization.

As usual, everything we do prioritizes lived experience, developmental and classroom expertise, and a safe, nonjudgmental community. Come together with other folks with similar questions, so we can laugh and figure it out together, to try to make it all a little easier, and so everyone can feel a little less alone.

Want to read more or find a specific article? Start here.

When a child can’t swim, we don’t punish them for struggling.

If a child can’t swim, we don’t offer them stickers for staying afloat in the deep end. We offer them something that helps, like floaties, or we let them hang on to the wall. Sometimes, we let them stay in the shallow end until they feel confident.

We don’t just leave it at that, though. We teach them. We show them how to put their face in the water and blow bubbles, how to kick and tread water. We hold them, promising them they are safe, until they can do it alone. We don’t worry that if one kid has floaties, all the other kids will want them. We don’t take the floaties before they are ready, saying, “Well, they’re going to have to learn someday.” And we don’t worry that if we hold children up and promise them they are safe, they will never want to learn to swim.

When they falter, if they can’t make it across the pool, and they go down, a lifeguard jumps in. We don’t leave them there to teach them a lesson, even if they were misbehaving when we taught them to tread. And when they surface, stressed and spluttering, if in fighting for what feels like their lives, they flail and smack the lifeguard or spit pool water on another kid, we don’t yell that they should be more in control. We don’t decide that they are “violent.” We don’t “safe restrain” them. 

When children (and adults) are overwhelmed or panicking, it can feel like drowning, like you are sinking to the bottom of the pool, spluttering and begging for help. Sometimes, you think you are begging for help, but adults see flailing and hear shrieking. Sometimes you get help. Sometimes the people you’ve been told are there to help offer only angry words or a lecture on respect or a physical restraint.

If a child can’t swim, we don’t chalk it up to “behaviour.” We don’t introduce them to a very calm, very nice lady with a folder full of stickers who will try to convince them that the next time, when they are drowning and in fear of their life, instead of flailing and sputtering, what we who have promised to hold them safe really want them to do is to take a deep breath.

What if we believed that every child was already trying their hardest to learn other things too? What if we agreed to interpret children’s behaviourally flailing and failing and yelling as cries for help, like we do in the pool? What if, instead of punishing or labeling, we worked to help them not panic, or to uncover what is making it hard and to offer children the accommodations they need?

The Huddle for Families helps parents and communities try things this way, to see “bad” behaviour as a cry for help, and to problem solve what children need to feel safe, competent, and at home. If your child is struggling, and you want a different way too, come on in.

Want to read more or find a specific article? Start here.

Is this all my fault?

No. This is not your fault. We promise. It’s not because you are a bad parent. It’s not because you fed her too much sugar, or let her stay up to eat with her father. It is not because you don’t have firm limits in your home or you’re not taking enough deep breaths or you’re not doing self care (although, we know you’re probably not). It’s not because you haven’t prayed hard enough for things to be easier for your child. 

It’s not because you sometimes fight with your partner or you don’t have a partner or you have multiple partners or you have a same sex partner or there’s “no mother/father in the picture” or you’re not his “real” parent.

It’s not because you sometimes lose it and yell at him. Or at anyone.

It’s not that you know too much about children or don’t know enough about children or your older kid had a lot of plastic toys and the chemicals seeped into your pregnant belly, along with that glass of wine you had at your sister’s wedding. It’s not whatever else your mother/in-laws/mosque friend/book club/the lady in the grocery store line hit you with in the middle of that epic meltdown.

It’s not because you work outside the home or in the home or you gave up work to stay home or “you know this is because you’re working nights, right?”

Not right. None of it is right. All over the world, hundreds of thousands of families – millions of families – are doing all of those things, screwing up and eating gluten under truly not-perfect conditions and still not having meltdowns on the bus.

This Is Not. Your. Fault. Blame is the game of people who need to believe that good things and privilege happen to them because of the good things they do. And that therefore, there’s nothing they can do to help your child. Blame believes that if we were just “good” parents, short-order cook parents, devout, positive, gentle parents who also set firm limits and breathed mindfully, who spent any extra cash on private services or had a better “system” at home, if we just tried harder, it would all be okay.

It is not all okay. Your child is miserable. We know. It’s exhausting and heart-breaking and relentless. And also: it is still not your fault. 

This can be hard to accept. Because if it’s our fault, at least that means there is SOMETHING we could be doing differently, something that would make it all easier for them. Honestly, that quick fix is a myth. We’re sorry. 

This doesn’t mean it can’t get better, and it doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. But first, for you to have the energy and capacity to be the fierce warrior your child needs (because trust us, this is super hard on them most of all), you need ALL your capacity. You can’t be wasting time and brain space blaming yourself. So try to stop, okay?

Also, you can’t do this alone. You need a team. Friends, family who get it. Other parents who have been there, people who have realistic, informed advice and ideas, and a safe, non-judgmental community where you can let it all hang out.

Welcome to The Huddle, for Families. We are here to help. Come on in.

* Everything on this list is something someone suggested to us at some point. Sigh.

Want to read more or find a specific article? Start here.